Antidepressants Don’t Curtail Drinking in Women
Reported March 1, 2007
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Women who are depressed may still be hitting the bottle too hard, even if they are taking antidepressants.
The same, however, can’t be said for men. A new study shows depressed men on the medications significantly reduce their drinking to levels comparable to men who are not depressed.
The findings come from a large Canadian study of men, women, depression, drinking habits, and antidepressant use. Overall, depressed men on antidepressants reported drinking about 414 drinks per year, compared to 579 drinks per year for depressed men not on medication and 436 drinks per year for non-depressed men.
Women who were depressed and on antidepressants averaged 264 drinks per year, versus 235 for depressed women not on medication and 179 for non-depressed women.
The authors believe these results point to significant gender differences when it comes to depression and its treatment. While they aren’t sure what’s causing these differences, they suggest more needs to be done to take gender into account, not only in this case, but when dealing with other medical conditions as well.
“The fact that the relationship between the use of antidepressants and the level of alcohol consumption is different for men and women points to the importance of taking gender influences and sex differences into consideration in the treatment and prevention of many health conditions,” reports study author Miriam Stewart, Ph.D., from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Gender and Health. “This type of research reporting significant sex differences helps identify important clues for tailoring interventions.”
SOURCE: Canadian Medical Association Journal, published online Feb. 27, 2007